The invention relates to a thermoforming device, in particular for cups that can be filled with a foodstuff having a molding tool, comprising an upper part and a deep-drawing mold underneath the upper part for molding at least one cup into a heated sheet of film, the deep-drawing mold forming a side wall and a bottom region on the at least one cup, the molding of the cup into the deep-drawing mold taking place by producing a positive pressure on the sheet of film in the direction of the deep-drawing mold, the deep-drawing mold comprising at least one first part-element, with a through-opening for molding the side wall, and a second part-element, formed as a component that is separate from the at least one first part-element, for molding the bottom region, the two part-elements being arranged such that they are movable in relation to one another in such a way that the second part-element can in certain regions be introduced into the end face of the through-opening of the first part-element that is facing the second part-element, and a base area of the second part-element that forms the bottom region of the cup being adapted to the cross section of the through-opening in the first part-element in such a way that, to form different container heights, the base area can be positioned to different heights of the through-opening in such a way that the base area of the second part-element is arranged circumferentially at a small distance from the circumferential wall of the through-opening of the first part-element.
By means of such a thermoforming device known from practice, multiple cups arranged next to one another are molded simultaneously into a heated sheet of film and subsequently filled with a foodstuff, such as yoghurt or the like. The filled cups are then sealed with a foil lid (consisting for example of aluminum) and, lastly, individual cups or multiple cups connected to one another are punched out from the sheet of film.
For molding the cups into the sheet of film, the known thermoforming device has a molding tool with a deep-drawing mold, which has for each cup an opening with an inner circumferential wall and a bottom region adjoining the circumferential wall. The circumferential wall and the bottom region thereby form the shape of the cup molded into the sheet of film. Furthermore, the deep-drawing mold consists of a first part-element, which is fixed with respect to an upper part of the thermoforming device and interacts with a height-adjustable, punch-like second element (for each opening). The height-adjustable second element allows different cup heights to be realized. An important aspect of this is that the first element is always arranged in congruence with the upper part of the thermoforming device or with the sheet of film, and so the accessibility to the openings of the first device is made more difficult. In addition, there are applications in which labels are to be attached to the outer sides of the cups, it being intended for this to take place already before the molding of the cups, that is to say in the region of the thermoforming device (“in-mold labeling”). The feeding device required for this needs a relatively big installation space in the region of the first part-element, and so, because of the described arrangement of the two part-elements on the thermoforming device, this is often difficult to realize in practice. It is also disadvantageous that, because of the work sequences, in which the labels first have to be introduced into the openings of the first part-element and only then can the molding of the containers take place, the known thermoforming device has a relatively low output.